Building a Coffin
by cap red
Summary: Written for The Firms June Challenge. How did Blunt get to the point where he was able to blackmail a child? One shot.


AN: Hi all, yes I know I should be working on my other projects and I am, but I figured working on something else will get me out of my writers block. This is my first time within this fandom as a writer, but when an idea strikes you have to go with it. Constructive feedback is always appreciated, so feel free to give your honest opinion. This was written for The Firms June challenge.

Disclaimer: I don't own Alex Rider, and am not making any money out of this.

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At first it was little things. He would get a phone call from a certain office asking for him to do a mission of some sort, and he would do it without a thought. He trusted the people calling and thought that what they wanted was something right and good and he was proud to be involved, because that was why he started in that business. He was proud of his country and proud to serve.

When that first mission was over, he lit up a cigarette and felt a warm glow of satisfaction. He watched from his flat window at the busy street, and watched the people wander past. All were with black suits and black briefcases and talking on blackberries about meaningless things with no consequence. He let out puffs of smoke over their heads and smugly thought of how he was doing something so important, and worthwhile and secret. He was so pleased with himself.

The next time he got that call, someone died. It was a shock. He always knew it could happen, but he never really expected it to. Not to one of his people. His were supposed to be indestructible and it was a terrible moment when he realised that they _weren't_. They were human. They were made of weak flesh, held together by weak bones and tendons, thin skin, too easily torn apart by lead and steel.

He didn't feel any satisfaction that time, only a sort of grim understanding that they died for a cause, and it was a good and right cause.

But it was so hard to keep that thought in mind as he breathed smoke over the descending black coffin, adorned in an incongruously bright flag, before it was consumed by the earth.

After the third mission he stormed into the office of his contact and demanded answers. It had been a disaster from start to finish. Too much information had been wrong. Too many men had died.

He was led to a woman who chewed on mints and smiled with a smile that didn't reach her eyes, and spoke in a tone contrived to convince. He shouted at her and she sat calmly behind her desk as if his ravings meant nothing. He shouted until he was exhausted and then sank behind a chair and said nothing.

Only then did she deign to speak and speak she did, in a voice so devoid of reality that it might as well have been blank. Her voice had the right inflections at the right time to convey emotion, but it was clear that none of it was real. She was false in a way that made him afraid because if she was false, what else was? Were the reasons she was giving in her carefully crafted voice real, or was it a cover for something far more sinister? But he nodded his head at everything she said, and tried desperately to believe her, even as he didn't, because if he failed to believe her, then the reason for their deaths would be gone and everything he'd done would have been without a cause.

It didn't stop him from shaking when he was alone in his flat as he allowed the cigarette to burn.

The fourth and fifth call came and went and more good people died and more things went wrong and more cigarettes were smoked as he watched black suits on busy streets talking into blackberries wishing so hard that he could do the same. And then he was invited back to the office. The woman was there and she offered him a job.

"It would be very different," she said, "Not the sort of thing that a common soldier could do." She smiled that not right smile and chewed on her mints and he wanted to smoke so badly, because he didn't want to be anything but a common soldier, but he also wanted to know what was going on so that his trust in the cause could be renewed, but he was also afraid of knowing just in case his trust was shattered. But he couldn't smoke and he couldn't see the black of more coffins with an incongruously bright flag descending into the ground.

He agreed.

After his first job with them he threw up and then smoked just to get the taste out of his mouth and to chase away the half imagined stench with something reassuring and familiar. He'd been wrong, and all he could do was curl into a ball on his bed and cry, and shout, and rage at the meaningless of it all. It was not right or good, or any of the other things that he thought it was, and he was most certainly not proud.

But as he met with the woman, dressed in black and chewing mints, he knew that he was trapped.

Several missions later, after attending more funerals, and breathing in more smoke than he'd ever breathed before, after screaming until his voice was so faint it was only a whisper, and crying until no more tears could flow, he realised he did not have the energy to rage anymore, but neither did he have the heart to feel any other emotion, not when his purpose was destroyed and all he had left was his job. He became blank, to hide the emotion that he buried deep inside, and in his own way he became as false as the mint chewing woman.

He buried himself in his work and did more and more things that once would have made him sick. More coffins were created and filled and some had the flags and others did not, and if he did not truly become numb to it, his mask was so perfect that no one realised that with every death and every cigarette his mind was crumbling more and more. And as he rose through the ranks until he was higher in his job than he ever thought he could be, he descended further and further into the coffin he was building for himself.

Then there was the boy. Alex Rider. Child soldier extraordinaire. He was spectacular at first. He had this spirit about him that showed a belief in the right and good that he once had himself.

He took it away. With every cigarette, with every mission, with every life that piled up around the boy, the light died in his eyes until it went out all together, and he was gone, and with it the last vestiges of remorse. The coffin he built for himself was complete. The mask, the facade, became him. The screaming inside stopped.

He was there at the funeral. A coffin with no flag went into the ground and was covered up. As was his habit he waited until after the funeral before lighting up. He was in his office, ash dripping off the end of the cigarette and settling around his feet. He felt no remorse for the death of the boy, even as his hand shook.

After all, what was one coffin really, to consider?


End file.
